Since its founding in 1979, the mission of California Social Welfare Archives (CSWA) is to collect and preserve documents and personal histories that illuminate the development of social issues and problems in the field of health, social work and social welfare in California, as well as the answers that have emerged to cope with such problems.

The archaeological site material in the museum’s collections dates from approximately 8,000 thousand years ago to the early 1800s. This material includes artifacts from the  indigenous people known as the Tongva who were living on Catalina Island - which they called Pimu - when the Spanish arrived in 1542. Also in the collections are approximately two thousand items dating from the 1880s…

The Corita Art Center currently houses a substantial collection of archival materials (photographs, slides, correspondence, press clippings, exhibition materials, and various ephemera) related to the artist, educator, and social justice advocate, Corita Kent. While Kent was born in Fort Dodge, IA and died in Boston, MA, she spent the majority of her life and formative artistic years in Los…